Class Notes

James Fraser Jackson (MED ’44)

With a mother and two aunts who were nurses, and two uncles who were physicians, James Fraser Jackson always thought he would enter the field of medicine, and he always imagined himself as a family doctor in his hometown of East Liverpool, Ohio. He eventually achieved his dream, working 18-hour days at the job he loved until his retirement in 2002. But what he and his classmates could not have imagined was that midway through their freshman year at Pitt Med, world events would dictate the first steps of their medical careers.

Following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, Jim—as he was known in medical school—and all his classmates were drafted into the army. “They kept us in medical school, and when we graduated, we had accelerated internships,” he recalled. After his internship at Allegheny General Hospital, Jim served his country as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, stationed at stateside hospitals “trying to put parts of the soldiers back together.”

After the war, Jim went back to his hometown—where everyone knows him by his middle name, Fraser, which was the surname of his two uncles who were physicians—and started his practice. He and his wife of 55 years, Irene, live in East Liverpool to this day. Staying in one town and caring for multiple generations of his neighbors earned him a special place in their hearts. They voted him the first Tri-State Doctor of the Year in 1986 by casting their ballots at grocery stores and other public places. And they named a park for him overlooking the Ohio River when he retired.

“The funny thing about that is I had a classmate, David Pugh, who is now deceased,” he remembered. “He lived in Chester, West Virginia, which is right across the river from East Liverpool. His town dedicated a park to him, too, that also looks out across the river. So two Pitt Med alumni from the same class have parks that face each other across the Ohio.”

He recently visited Pittsburgh to take the recertification exam for the American Board of Family Practice, even though he has been retired for two years. He still wants to keep his certification current, especially since he was a member of the founders’ group of the ABFP in 1970. “It wouldn’t look good if I failed, would it?” he joked. During his visit, he recalled his education at Pitt Med as challenging, but also as an experience for which he is very grateful. “Some of the professors were extremely difficult,” he said. “Some to the point of insulting students in front of their peers. I always preferred the kindness of the teachers who shared information in a humane manner. Since we were being trained to make people feel better, it was good to be treated kindly.”

James Fraser remains a loyal supporter of Pitt Med, and promises to always do so. “I owe everything, I feel, to Pitt.”